Google Caught Selling High PageRank Links

Posted • August 11, 2007 • Comments Off

Google Caught Selling High PageRank Links, and this isn’t the First time.
Just because Google makes the rules, does this mean they don’t have to follow them?

A recent blog post by Arron Wall from SEObook.com fueled my interest in Google’s rule bending for themselves.

Google is buying marketshare for Google Checkout by profiling merchants who use it, and giving them free high PageRank links from Google sites.

In a post on their checkout blog which currently sports a PageRank of 8, included a Long Tail link with very targeted anchor text. Here is part of a post right from the Official Google Checkout Blog posted by Alyssa England, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Checkout.

…placement on search result pages. In addition, Google Checkout helps make it even easier for consumers to find us when they search for items like Titleist Pro V1 Golf Balls by displaying the Google Checkout badge next to our search results.

Google carefully constructs a scenario where they can talk about searching for an item, and create a link to a product page on GolfBalls.com. This is just like the old bait and switch technique. They wouldn’t let me get away with this, Google would call me a spammer.

If I were Google I would do the same thing. The difference is that I wouldn’t penalize everyone else for doing what I am doing myself.

The hypocrisy at Google really burns my boat. How can they penalize us for doing something that they do them selves? If I do something that Google puts in their paid links category I would get penalized. They are even asking us as webmasters to help them by reporting these links.

Late,
seopdx/gary-pool.html”>Gary Pool

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